Desideratum
by Flipspring
Summary: As much as we tell ourselves that we want to express our thoughts, the darkest of them still remain, at most, implicit. OC. No pairings.
1. 1

Summary: As much as we tell ourselves that we want to express our thoughts, the darkest of them still remain, at most, implicit. OC. No pairings.

Note: Advanced apologies for the long Note. You can skip it if you want to, but there's just some background on the story I thought I should put in.

Part of this was to see if I could write a good story using an OC that isn't a Mary-Sue. I think I succeeded, but it was quite a challenge. However, although the story is told by following the OC, if you look at it closely, it's not actually about the OC. I figure I'm allowed to write OC stories if I want to, even though most people prefer reading about characters they already know. :P

Also, I'm going to try and write this to be 25 chapters, but there will likely be some rather short ones. Most chapters will commence with a Haiku. Beware time-leaps between each chapter. I want to make it coherent, but in a disjointed way, so going from chapter to chapter could be confusing. And let's just assume that the OC never saw a redhead until Sasori.

And I know this first chapter is boring, but it gets better. I think.

Inazuma = Lightning bolt  
>Hachi = Bee, or the number eight<p>

Warnings: Some language, gore, and violence.

Pairings: None.

Characters: Sasori, OC. Deidara, Kankuro in mention.

**I own nothing of Naruto, including but not limited to the characters of the Narutoverse.**

* * *

><p>1<p>

_Slash of whirling rain_

_Flowers drip with soaking pain_

_Waiting for the sun_

* * *

><p>The man was dressed in black garb from head to toe. His face was decorated with purple paint that accentuated his fearsome grin. An open scroll dangled from his left hand, the freed paper hanging lifelessly towards the ground.<p>

There was a puff of smoke.

His opponent's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before narrowing again, and she watched as he slowly – as though he had all the time in the world – lifted his hands and connected chakra strings to the puppet, bringing it to life.

He was ready. His teeth were bared in anticipation as he watched his opponent, a small girl sporting the vest and headband of the Village Hidden in the Clouds. Her dark complexion and cropped, white hair also indicated that she was born and bred in the Land of Lightning, so he reminded himself to watch out for any lighting-based ninjutsu. She had kunai tucked between each of her fingers, and she held her hands up in front of her defensively as they eyed each other.

Neither making the first move.

It was then that he noticed that the girl wasn't watching his movements, that she was instead staring unblinkingly at the puppet he was controlling.

Kankuro grinned. His newest puppet had quickly become one of his favorites since he'd added it to its arsenal not a month ago; the greatest Sand puppeteer before himself had masterfully crafted it.

It was the body of the late puppet master Sasori, the infamous Scorpion of the Red Sand.

And now it was Kankuro's.

He took the girl's momentary distraction to attack. He was sure this battle would be quick. The girl didn't look to be more than a chuunin, after all, and there was also the usual assumption that other lands' ninja were inferior.

The girl, on the other hand, remembered...


	2. 2

2

_Dove caught in the snow_

_Like a fly on a still pond_

_Where has your home gone?_

* * *

><p>It was yet another frigid winter in the Land of Lighting. Regrettably, the weather was never quite at a comfortable temperature in that country; winters always carried the danger of frostbite and blizzards, while summers always brought heatstroke and blazing sun.<p>

It was on one cold winter day, not so long before the seasons were due to change, that a woman wrapped up her young daughter in warm clothes and sent her out to get some exercise.

The girl, just six years old, waddled out into the blinding snow, promising her mother that she would not to fall in the river, and yes, she would remember to come home in time for snacks.

This girl's name was Inazuma Hachi. She was the daughter of two well-respected ninja in the Village Hidden in the Clouds, and come the beginning of the warm season, she would begin training to become a kunoichi herself. As she made her way down the icy, rocky, path to the frozen stream, each breath puffed out from behind her scarf and floated apart into the cold. She was uncomfortably warm, despite the chill, for her mother had dressed her in more than enough fabric to keep a baby chick warm, happy, and buried in a snow bank.

So when the girl passed out of sight from her house, she peeled her overcoat off clumsily and carried the bulky clothing in her arms, sighing with relief as she pulled the scarf down from her face with one mitten-wrapped hand.

She carefully made her way down the icy slope until she made it to the river, whose surface was frozen and covered in snow, save for a few fast-moving parts. Inazuma draped her coat on a prickly, frozen, bush and began wandering around, entertaining herself with the snow and ice.

After about fifteen minutes of mindless fun, she stumbled over a snow-covered stone and around another pale-brown, prickly bush.

And came to a halt.

There lay a boy. Or was it a man? He certainly looked large and scary in her eyes. He was wearing a black-and-red cloak and had red hair… red.

Inazuma remembered the time when her mother was showing her how to cut vegetables, and she'd accidentally cut herself with the knife. The blood oozed out of her finger and dripped against the cold white tiles of the kitchen.

That was the color red his hair was. Like blood on kitchen tiles.

She stared, wide-eyed and openly, for though she had seen plenty of people with white hair, black hair, yellow hair (and even had a friend who had pale orange hair), she'd never seen anyone with red hair.

Suddenly, his eyes snapped open, and she was disappointed by their color. Just brown. His just brown eyes rolled over and locked with her dark blue ones.

"A-are you okay? Who are you?" Her voice was high and a little frightened.

Suddenly, a steel cable slithered out from under his cloak and wrapped around her ankle like a snake trying to constrict its prey. The pointed tip tried to pierce the fabric of her pants, but its efforts were weak and her pants were made of tough black leather. The coil collapsed around her foot.

"See the purple on that rope?" He rasped. Her eyes jumped back up to his face. She nodded.

"It's poison. If you tell anyone I'm here, you'll die."

It was a lie, of course. A desperate lie, but she believed it wholeheartedly. She swallowed, eyes impossibly wide, and stumbled back, away from the man with blood red hair lying on the snow, the purple poison of his limp steel cable seeping into the white.

Inazuma scrambled back behind the shelter of the naked bush, gasping for breath as she crouched by the icy river. She was trembling like a deer caught in the crosshairs, but her eyes refused to water the way they usually did when she was afraid or hurt. It wasn't the red-haired man that drove the trembling, but the idea of saying something about him. Would she really die? Just like that? How? She was flooded by an inexplicable urge to race back to the village and tell everyone about everything, just to see what would happen. But then she would... die? Hugging her knees, she stared at the leather of her pants, and trembled with the forces of curiosity and fear at war inside her.

Death was a concept entirely foreign to her young mind.


	3. 3

3

_Fear's metallic taste_

_Stings like lighting on my tongue_

_Burning on a gale_

* * *

><p>Years later, the other girls started wearing skirts and shorts to do two things at once: deal with the heat of summer, and tease the boys. But Inazuma refused to follow suit. She would always wear long, tough pants that went down to her ankles, with silvery shin guards over them, no matter how hot the day was.<p>

And she would never tell them why.

Just shrugging, "It's comfortable and practical, too," as she remembered the man with the blood red hair that she'd stumbled across in the snow.

"Really, Ina, I don't know how you can possibly stand the heat," her orange-haired friend Kamomi would laugh, her freckled nose crinkling and shining with sweat. The third member of their genin team, a tall, gangly boy named Shin would roll his eyes and simply pour some water from his bottle over his inconveniently black hair.

"One day, when I'm the only one standing after a fight, you guys'll forgive me."

"I don't see how long pants will help you be the last one standing," Kamomi snorted.

Inazuma fiddled with the end of her braid and stared at her feet.

"Well, you will see. One day," she muttered, almost loud enough for her teammates to hear.


	4. 4

4

_Nightshade's purple blooms_

_Kisses death on foolish lips_

_Cannot harm its bee_

* * *

><p>Six-year-old Inazuma squatted by the edge of the frozen stream, barely daring to breathe. Would she <em>really<em> die if she told anyone? She stole a furtive glance towards the bush that was hiding the man with red hair. It wasn't healthy for him to be lying in the snow with nothing but a cloak on. Should she help him? He could die! Maybe if she helped him, he would forgive her, and she could tell everyone what she wanted. This fear of speaking dug deep into her bones, clashing with her talkative nature.

She dug a thermos out of the pocket of her coat and peeked around the bush.

There he was, still lying there.

Her breath gasped clouds into the air.

Trembling, she skirted around the bush and came to the side where his head was, away from the poisoned cable.

"H-hello?"

She thought she heard a hiss, and swallowed back her fear. Ninjas must be courageous.

"I-I have some tea. It's in a thermos, so it should still be warm. I thought… I thought you might like it. It's dangerous to lie out in the cold."

She nearly swallowed her tongue when he tipped his head back so that he faced her.

"Go away, brat," he said softly, "I have no use for hot tea."

His voice wasn't raspy like before. It was like air, stirring and floating restlessly, like a prince in a stone dungeon. She swallowed.

"You'll get frostbite. Mum always tells me to be careful of letting my body temperature drop too much outside."

Eyes, flat and brown, stared up at her from behind red bangs. Then he blinked them closed, as though falling asleep.

"I'm sure your mother is very wise. Why not go home to her, brat?"

"But…"

"Leave me alone," he said sharply, "I'll be fine."

This time, whether it was a lie or not depended on luck. If enemy ninja found him while he was here, in this state (seriously depleted of chakra and unable to do more than twitch a little), he would not be fine. It was true, though, that the cold didn't bother him.

But the girl didn't leave.

"Where do you live?" He asked.

She jumped. Then frowned, "Mum says not to tell strangers."

He snorted softly, "Do you know then, where I am? I'm a little lost, brat, you see. Could you tell me what villages I might be near?"

"Um… Well, we are pretty close to the Village Hidden in the Clouds." And then she added brightly, "My parents are ninjas!"

He frowned. Just his luck.

"You remember what I said about the poison, don't you, brat?"

"That I would die if I told anyone about you?"

"Yes." She nodded.

"Good. Now go."

She turned and scrambled back away, feeling relieved and worried to be away from his presence. And then the fear struck again as she remembered the bloody-haired man's warning. She knew death was bad. She knew she would die if she spoke about him.

But could she hide the truth from her mother?


	5. 5

5

_Glowing lantern light_

_Does little to quell blindness_

_In the winter night_

* * *

><p>"How was your journey to the river, Ina?"<p>

"It was fine, Mum." Her heart pounded in her chest.

"That's nice. Change out of those clothes, sweetie, I have some cookies ready in the kitchen."

Inazuma trailed up to her room numbly. That had been too easy.

That night, her father came home from a two-week mission in the Land of Earth. They had hot noodle soup with mushrooms for dinner. The kitchen was filled with warmth and smiles and light, but as the darkness fell behind the curtained windows, Inazuma couldn't help but wonder…

"How cold can it be in the winter, Daddy? At night?"

"Very cold, Ina-chan. I wouldn't recommend going out there at all. You would freeze to death, most likely. Why the sudden curiosity?"

"Just wondering, that's all," she said, looking down at her bowl of rice hastily, letting her white bangs fall over her face. "Just wondering."


	6. 6

6

_The lively pull of spring_

_Heaves shy dancers to their feet_

_While some stay frozen cold_

* * *

><p>"H-hello?"<p>

"Brat, don't tell me you came back."

"I came back."

He sighed, unconsciously scraping his left hand against the snow.

"I snuck an extra scarf down here," She said, clumsily wrapping the fluffy, scratchy item around his head and neck. He didn't bother to fight her off. The sooner his chakra was replenished, the sooner he could get out of here. The main downside to his body these days was how long it took to get chakra back after using it. The cold wasn't helping, either.

"Daddy said it gets real cold at night. That I would die of cold if I went outside. Scary, huh?"

She got a noncommittal grunt in response.

"How did you stay alive last night?"

"Shut up, brat."

She stared at him.

"What?"

"I never heard a grown-up say that before."

He snorted.


	7. 7

7

_Birds take flight from trees_

_Like thoughts of children asking, "Please…!"_

_Snatched into the breeze_

* * *

><p>The next day, Inazuma had a friend over to play.<p>

"Ina! Guess what? My mommy said that she would get me a ninja hawk next week for when I start academy! It's going to be a little chick and I'm going to raise it and everything!"

"Really?" In her excitement, Inazuma forgot to hold onto a wooden block, and it clattered to the floor, bringing a carefully constructed tower down with it. She blinked at her friend, Kamomi, who was about the same age as her and who came from one of the smaller clans of the Village Hidden in the Clouds, the Torikawa clan.

The Torikawa were known for being bird-handlers and having orange hair. They could make a mental connection with their birds, which gave them a huge advantage in a fight, for they could survey their enemy's movements from high above the battlefield. These abilities meant that they were usually chosen for recon and spying, rather than front-line attack, but having a predatory bird watching your back was always useful in a fight, too.

"I wish I could have a bird too… I bet it would be fun to have a friend with you wherever you go," Inazuma pouted, jealous of her friend's luck. Her own family did have a few specific jutsu unique to it (family heirlooms is a way of looking at them), but it could hardly be called a clan.

"Don't worry, Ina, you can help me take care of it. And maybe we'll even be on the same genin team one day!"

"Most of the teams I've seen have two boys and one girl," Inazuma sulked, "I bet the last time we'll see each other is on graduation."

"Aw, don't be so sad, Ina. It'll all work out, you'll see," Kamomi waved her hands in the air for emphasis.

Inazuma leaned forward on her hands as she began stacking the blocks back up into recognizable shapes. After a few failed attempts that brought carefully structured piles falling to the floor, the blocks soon assembled into the shape of a person.

"Kamomi? Do you have a square red block anywhere?"

"Here."

Inazuma took it and set the block on the top of the humanoid structure, completing the head. She kneeled back to admire her work.

"Kamomi, have you ever met anyone from another ninja village?"

"No. I've never even been very far outside this village."

"Do you think they would be very different from us? What if they looked really different, or acted really differently, and lived really differently from us?"

"I never thought about that. What do you mean…"

"Snack time, you two!" Inazuma's mother called from the next room.

The two girls scrambled to their feet and made a beeline for the kitchen.

The wooden block man with the red-painted head stood silently on the floor.


	8. 8

8

_Bright as noonday sun_

_Smiles shine so joyfully_

_Against deception_

* * *

><p>By the end of the week, his chakra had returned. Inazuma had done everything she could think of to help him, and he found it exasperating, annoying and a little of a round, snowy feeling he couldn't quite place.<p>

So it was on the seventh day that Inazuma stumbled around the bush that she found him sitting upright and writing complicated seals on a scroll, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

"I brought a… what's that?"

"A seal."

"A what?"

"Your parents are ninja and you don't know what a seal is?"

"I haven't started going to the academy yet."

He looked up from the scroll and narrowed his eyes at her for a while. Suddenly, he reached his hand out and touched two fingers to her forehead. She flinched at the dead-coldness of hand.

"Your hand's really cold, mister."

He muttered something she couldn't quite catch, and felt an odd heat spread against her forehead and vanish.

"There, brat. Now you won't be able to rat on me, even if you want to."

"What?" She rubbed the back of her thick mitten against her forehead, trying to get rid of the last of the odd, tingling sensation.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Um, I'm not supposed to…"

"Tell that to strangers, I get it." He painted a few more characters onto the scroll, attempting to ignore her as she kneeled next to him and leaned over the scroll. Unfortunately, her woolen cap began obscuring his vision of the seal, so he made his body sigh to let her know he was irritated. She took no notice.

"If I tell you my name, does that mean that we're not strangers anymore, then?"

"I guess…" she said, cocking her head at the scroll.

"Good. My name is Sasori."

She glanced up and leaned back on her heels. "Cool name! But it kind of sounds like a girl's…"

He sighed again, and finished up on the scroll, letting her watch from the side. Swirling patterns of tiny black symbols covered most of the pale cloth, and staring at them for too long made her eyes water and blur.

"Can you write your name here?" He pointed to the middle of the scroll, where there was a blank circle surrounded with lettering.

"I could, but why?"

"If I was ever stuck in the snow again, would you help me?"

"Sure, Sasori!" She giggled. He watched as her hand stretched out to take the brush from him, and she clumsily wrote her name in the circle. He read the scrawl with some difficulty.

"Inazuma, huh?"

"Yep."

"I'm an impatient man, you see."

"But you could lie here for a whole week! I don't have the patience for that."

He ignored her. "And I'm as practical as I am impatient."

"Okay…" This was starting to get boring.

"That's why I sealed your mind from telling anyone about me, and that's why I had you write your name."

"You sealed my mind? What does that mean?"

"It just means you can't tell anyone about me."

"Oh. But you said the poison…" Inazuma frowned, trying to understand what it all added up to. The thought that he'd lied to her didn't even surface in her conscience.

"Just in case."

"Why do you need to be a secret?"

"I have a lot of enemies, kid. And that's also why you wrote your name. If I ever need you again, I'll summon you."

"Wow, really? I didn't know you could do that."

"Most likely though, you'll never see me again."

She looked down at the snow and scooped some up with her mitten, letting it crumble back off to the ground. She sniffed.

"Never?"

"Most likely never. But you never know. I'm impatient and practical."

She looked up at him. "Does your hair bleed? Is that why it's red?"

He raised his eyebrows. "What a foolish question. Hair doesn't bleed."


	9. 9

Note: Things will start getting a bit more intense after this chapter. We're starting to get to the stuff I'm more looking forward to, I think.

* * *

><p>9<p>

_Clung to its flower_

_Butterfly sips silently_

_Its whole world is there_

* * *

><p>It was her third and final year in the academy. She'd flown through the courses, pushed to higher and higher advanced levels, and would be taking her exit exam at the end of the year. In the middle of a lecture about summoning, Inazuma raised her hand. Some of her classmates (most of them older than her) glared at her for breaking the teacher's monologue; they'd been getting away with dozing, faces pressed against their wooden desks. Many of them had been using their scarves as pillows, since it was late autumn and temperatures was getting quite cold outside, and the school never turned the heater up very high. Supposedly it built their character and resilience, but Inazuma's father swore that the Village treasury was just too cheap to spend money on heating.<p>

"Yes, Miss Hachi?"

"Is it possible to summon people? For fighting, I mean."

The teacher, a grey-haired, retired shinobi, looked a little taken aback. No one had asked him such a question before. He set down the chalk that he'd been using to draw diagrams on the chalkboards.

"I suppose it is possible…" the teacher frowned, "though I've never heard of it used before, outside of ceremonial procedures like chuunin examinations. Usually a summoning contract is needed between animal summons and the summoner, but I've never heard of using human summons in battle. They're probably illegal. Who would want to be summoned when they were in the middle of something important just to be used in someone else's battle?"

"Oh, okay." The teacher went back to his lecture, and his students went back to sleeping. Inazuma frowned at her notebook. She'd long since figured out that Sasori was a rouge ninja of some sort, but had never really gotten much farther than that.

She had done a lot of extra studying in the library over the past years in an attempt to figure things out, but could never seem to find exactly what she was looking for, although she'd found a great deal of cool-looking jutsu. There was even an interesting zapping jutsu for those who were lightning-natured, which could be used to seize up opponents' muscles and nerves and made them incapable of moving the affected parts of their body. She'd taken notes on that one.

It was then, as she mulled over the possibilities of human summoning, among her sleeping classmates and droning teacher, she felt an odd tug just behind her heart.

And she disappeared in a puff of smoke.


	10. 10

10

_Burning rage of fire_

_The dry forests feed its ire_

_But cannot tear through stone_

* * *

><p>Inazuma fell face first against a hard, rocky ground miraculously free of ice and snow. She picked herself up, pressing her palms against the earth and the scroll that she'd fallen on; a scroll she recognized, that had her clumsily written name on it. She picked it up and stared at it for a long moment, and then looked around, looking for him. Her summoner.<p>

There was earth and stone everywhere, and she realized that she was at the edge of a sort of small gorge, and that there were explosions shaking the earth beneath her. Each BOOM rattled the small stones at her feet and sent waves of heat over the lip of the gorge and into her face, blowing back free strands of her hair.

She dropped to her belly (a reflex from ninja-training) crawled to the edge, took a deep breath, and looked down.

Below her were two ninja fighting, (what else could they be?) nearly impossible to see through the thick, grey smoke. She heard loud yelling and another ear-splitting explosion as an enormous fireball flared up below her. She rolled away from the edge, feeling blistering heat rise towards her, the stones digging into her ribs as she gripped the hard dirt with her hands. She just barely managed to get out of the way of the flames as they poured over the sides of the gorge.

Inazuma crawled behind a large boulder and crouched there, clutching the scroll to her chest and squeezing her eyes shut as BOOM after BOOM after BOOM rose up from the gorge, followed by plumes of fire and steam.

"Where am I?" she whispered, dust sticking to her tongue, just as a thousand needles dripping with purple (poison?) speared into the ground around her and against the back of her boulder.

When the explosions finally ceased, she crawled hesitantly back to the edge of the depression, careful to avoid the needles, and looked down. As the ashy smoke cleared on the wind, she was better able to see what was going on.

There he was, lying on his front. She couldn't see his face, but the red hair was unmistakable.

She scanned her eyes across the barren earth. Where was his opponent?

And then she saw him, a yellow-haired boy several years older than her, gasping as he clutched a gash in his side.

_It's poison._

She bit her lip, digging her fingers harder into the dirt. The air was cool and quiet, despite the previous explosions. What should she do? She watched as the boy gasped and groaned, leaning against the boulder. She watched as Sasori lay there, unmoving. Her eyes flitted back to the boy. He probably couldn't move much at all, especially if that wound was poisoned.

She made up her mind.

And before she could change it, she leapt down into the gorge, her feet and rear skidding painfully against the dirt. She rolled to a stop, jumped up, and ran over to her summoner. _If I ever need you…_

From the corner of her eye, she saw the yellow-haired boy try to stand, but he fell back with a muttered curse.

"Sasori?" Inazuma rolled him onto his back, (his shoulder made an odd_ clunk _against the stone beneath him) and saw that he was smirking faintly up at her.

"So you made it then, brat."

She nodded wordlessly, glancing at the yellow-haired boy who was gasping for breath and glaring at her with a gaze that promised death, as he leaned heavily against his boulder.

"Listen, kid, and do what I say."

"O-okay." Her voice shook as she looked down and gripped the fabric on his shoulders.

"There's a large puppet over there," she looked, and there it was, lying open in two halves, "My bag's in there. Bring it over."

She did, running, her feet skidding against the stones and her toes flexing in her boots.

"This one?"

"Open the pocket on the side, there should be some vials filled with yellow fluid."

"Yeah?"

"See the button on the side of each vial, and the needle on the end?"

She swallowed, nodding, as she examined the no-nonsense needle protruding from the end of the vial.

"Good. Now go over to that brat over there, stab him with the needle, and hit the button at the same time."

Her voice shook, "Will it kill him?"

Sasori looked up at her, his eyes scrutinizing her trembling lip and her fearful, watering eyes. She tried desperately (and unsuccessfully) to quash all signs of her unease and fear. It was the very first rule they taught in ninja academy: never show your emotions. Then, oddly, Sasori smiled at her. In truth, it was more of a pained pull at the corners of his mouth, but it was a smile, nonetheless.

"No, it's the antidote to the poison in his system."

Confusion.

"Wait, wait, what? You just poisoned him, and now you're…"

"…Giving him the antidote, yes. He's my new working partner, and I can't afford to let him die," said Sasori calmly, closing his eyes.

"Then why…?"

"Do what I say. And don't let him kill you." With that, he fell silent and completely still. Inazuma stared. This was insane. She looked at the yellow-haired boy, who leaned against a wall of soot-coated rock, his clothes and hair smudged with dirt. He was clutching the wound in his side with on hand, desperately trying to stem the flow of murky blood that was slowly darkening his shirt. He was watching her every move with his one visible blue eye, a frightening snarl fixed upon his lips.

Swallowing, Inazuma stood, gripping the vial of antidote in her hand, and took one step, then another, toward the boy. When she was just five more paces away from him, he burst out into a fearsome yell.

"Don't come any closer, or I'll blow you to bits, un!"

"I-I need to give you this a-antidote." His bright blue eye glared in response.

"Like 'ell I'm gonna believe that, un."

"Sa-Sasori said I have to give you this antidote or you'll d-die," she hissed, trying and failing to keep her voice steady.

He squinted up at her, clutching the wound in his side. "Who tha hell-re you?" he asked finally, his voice sounding a little slurred.

She took a deep breath and darted towards him, stabbing the needle into his shoulder and punching on the button. He yelled and swatted at her, then kicked her leg, causing her to topple over against him. She tried to scramble back, but he grabbed her by the shoulder and pressed the cold edge of a kunai against her throat. She froze, instantly, eyes unblinking and wide with fear.

"Slit her throat and I'll slit yours, Deidara," Sasori called quietly. Somehow, his voice carried through the gentle breeze from twenty paces away.

Inazuma hardly dared to move. Her knees were digging painfully into the rocks, and she was nose to nose with the boy who had a kunai to her throat. He was breathing heavy, strained gasps of air, but with each exhalation, his breath seemed to become more steady. Finally, he pushed her away. She stumbled back and fell on her rear, keeping her eyes fixed on the boy as he roughly pulled the needle out of his shoulder and dropped it on the ground with a shrill clatter.

"Who is this little seven-year-old anyway, un?" Deidara called to Sasori.

She didn't bother to correct him on her age. It was too dangerous. She just breathed in and out, keeping a steady rhythm, trying not to seem like a threat, trying desperately to blend into the lifeless gravel and dirt of the gorge.

Sasori didn't respond.

Deidara glared down at her, his blue eye flashing, blood seeping darkly through his grey shirt, the pale, watery sun glaring through the cloud cover behind him. He seemed larger than life. In her eyes, he was the very embodiment of power and violence.

* * *

><p>Note: Yes, this one is much longer than usual. Perhaps I got a little carried away? :3 Forgive me, please. Oh, and reviews are much loved!<p> 


	11. 11

11

_Hawk's gliding shadow_

_Sends prey fleeing for their lives_

_Seconds of warning_

* * *

><p>"The family jutsu?" Inazuma's father asked in surprise, "Why the sudden desire to learn it?"<p>

When she'd come back, everyone had been going crazy looking for her, and she'd had a hard time explaining away her sudden disappearance from the middle of class. In the end, she waved it off as a practical joke, and said that she was seeing how long she could go before she was found. ("I was just making sure that all the stuff I learned in stealth class actually works," she said, smiling as innocently as possible at her irate, spatula-weilding mother.)

"There will always be ninja stronger than me." Inazuma had never really understood that until she'd seen those explosions in the Land of Earth. "But if I can strike them down before they have a chance to get me, how can they attack back?"

Her father's lips pulled into a smile, "For a nine-year-old, you're pretty practical. And intelligent, though I'm sure all fathers say that. Fine. I'll teach you a good, speedy jutsu after my next mission."

"Teach me now! You never know when an attack might happen. And we both have time off this week." _I'm as practical as I am impatient._

He raised his hands in defeat. "Fine, fine," he laughed. "Though I warn you, it's not going to be easy."


	12. 12

12

_Tadpole hugs the mud_

_With tiny arms and fingers_

_As it becomes a frog_

* * *

><p>Across the rocky horizon, the sun shone its last faded blades of light against the sky, lighting up the wispy clouds that still hovered in the air. A few stars glimmered on the far end of the horizon, away from the quickly fading light of the sun, and the monotonous pattern of boulders and stone were soon painted with a hazy gray that seemed to give no discerning edges to their forms. Inside a cave, a small fire crackled in its nest of shriveled branches, casting dancing shadows all over the walls.<p>

Two people slouched by the warmth of the flame, their features sharply defined by glowing light and deep shadow, their shadows flowing out behind them like trailing garments. At the far end of the cave, a third figure was bundled in a red and black cloak, unmoving.

"Who are you anyway, un?" the taller of the two asked.

"Inazuma Hachi," she answered, leaning forward to warm her hands over the fire and refusing to make eye contact with the boy. Deidara spat a glob of slightly reddish saliva at the edge of the fire and rubbed a couple fingers against his chin absentmindedly.

"Huh," he grunted, and glanced over at the far end of the cave, "How'd you meet Sasori?"

"I… " She was going to tell him that she'd found him by the stream back home years ago, but her throat seemed to have closed up. She tried clearing it, loudly, but it just made her throat feel scratchy. She tried swallowing a few times, but that didn't help either.

Deidara raised his eyebrow at her as he attempted to forcefully rip his hair tie out of its ponytail. He then winced, dropping one hand to grip his side, his dirt-coated fingers dragging against his skin.

"You shouldn't do that. It'll get infected."

He glared at her, both eyes burning spitefully, with one just slightly visible from behind a few sooty strands of yellow hair. She shut her mouth and turned her eyes back to the fire. After a final second of glaring, he too faced the fire. There was an uncomfortable pause in which neither of them said anything.

Then, "You're from the Land of Lightning, aren't you? I've never seen dark skin and white hair on a person from any other country, un."

"Yeah." She nodded, although she wasn't facing him.

"So what're you doing in the Land of Earth, un?"

"Sasori summoned me."

"Huh…" he said thoughtfully, "I didn't know humans could be summoned like that."

She shrugged.

"But why would he summon a little seven-year-old to help him, of all things? You can't be old enough to have even started academy, un."

Irritation flared at the pit of her stomach. She may be small, but she wasn't _that puny. _"I'm nine. And I'll be taking my exit exam at the end of the school year."

He didn't bother to mask the vague flicker of surprise that flitted across his face. It was, after all, somewhat unusual (though not unheard of) for ninja to graduate from the academy after just two years. "No kidding? Maybe you're gonna be more useful than I thought, un. But if you're still not even a genin, I don't see what use you could be to him."

"I can't give him away."

"Un?"

"I…" she swallowed spastically, and coughed, trying to get her throat to work. There it was again.

Deidara leaned forward and squinted at her a little as she shifted uncomfortably. His hand dropped out of his hair. "Imagine that, un. The bastard put a mind seal on you, didn't he?"

"What's a bastard?"

Deidara just smirked. He reached up and gave his hair another tug, winced, and gave up.

* * *

><p><em>Note: Apologies if the time change jarred you. This is before she got back to her Village, still in the Land of Earth. Please review this chapter, I'd love to know what you think about it. :)<em>


	13. 13

Note: This one gave me a fair bit of trouble, for some reason. I wanted to cut it off earlier, but I didn't want to keep putting off explanations... Plus, we only have 12 more chapters to go. I'm going to need to start packing in more plot. :B

* * *

><p>13<p>

_If the fledgling falls_

_It becomes the meal of snakes_

_Where it might have flown_

* * *

><p>"So what kind of quick-acting jutsu do you want to learn?"<p>

"The best, hardest one you know. Preferably _the_ family one," she replied, blowing warm air into her cold hands. She'd left her thick gloves indoors, since most jutsu required seal weaving.

Her father laughed, "That's my girl. Alrighty then." He rubbed his own hands together.

"So have you learned about chakra type? They should've given you those chakra papers last year, right?"

"Yeah, I'm lighting-natured," she said proudly, grinning and nodding.

He nodded. "Good. Runs in the family. So, how good are you?"

"Not half bad," she said modestly, "I can even do most of the basic lightning type jutsu they taught us at school... You know, Blinding Flash, Static Stick, that kind of thing." The same couldn't be said for the rest of her undergrad classmates.

But her father frowned, "I see. I guess shinobi education isn't taken quite as seriously as it used to be."

She deflated a little, shoulders slumping unconsciously, "Huh?"

He shook his head, waving his hand, "It doesn't matter. Just means that we have to start simpler…"

"NO. Teach me the _Shadow Strike_ Dad! Or I'll tell Mum about the cookies and the…"

Her father's eyes widened comically and he held his finger up to his lips, shushing her loudly. She giggled at his panicked expression.

"Fine! You drive a hard bargain, missy. I should warn you, though, this jutsu is going to take a lot of training for you to master."

Inazuma planted her boots firmly into the frosty ground and put her hands on her hips, tipping her chin up defiantly. Nothing was coming between her and complete mastery of a powerful jutsu.

"Bring it."

He chuckled at her confident stance.

"Shadow Strike is actually quite simple in theory, but difficult to master because it requires a great deal of focus and chakra control. Basically, you build up a large ball of lightning-natured chakra between your hands, and compress it until it's just looks like a point of light. If you add the hand signs in correctly before you start, the chakra will be nearly impossible to see, despite its intensity, hence the name. You can stun your enemies from the shadows without them ever knowing what hit them."

"So... do you just let it go to strike with it?"

"Basically. But if you handle it wrong, it's easy to end up shocking yourself."

She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, looking thoughtful, "Okay, so how long does it take to build up the chakra?"

"That depends on how practiced you are. And the amount of chakra you can put into it also depends on your mastery of the jutsu. I suggest that you start with building up a ball between your palms, but once you're practiced enough, you can summon a Strike in just one hand, or between two fingers."

He held up his right hand, and a flickering dot of light instantly lit up between his middle and pointer finger.

"What about the hand signs?"

"Bird-Dragon-Boar-Snake-Rat. Don't bother using them when you first practice though, or it'll just get too complicated. Now shoo, I need to steal some more cookies from the kitchen."


	14. 14

14

_Winter ice will thaw_

_And bring about spring's warmth_

_If time isn't stopped_

* * *

><p>"Sasori, un. You all right? It's been a whole two days already, and it's not like I even injured you, un."<p>

The bundle in the corner of the cave didn't stir.

"Last time…" Inazuma swallowed as her throat closed up. She sighed.

Deidara acted as though she hadn't spoken. "How're you gonna get back home, by the way? It's quite a ways to the Village Hidden in the Clouds, especially for an unqualified ninja brat like you, un."

"I don't know," she answered, trying (and failing) not to feel offended that he'd called her an 'unqualified ninja brat.'

Sasori suddenly sat up from his corner, and blinked open his eyes, squinting at the watery morning light that poured in from the cave entrance. He stretched his left arm up and rolled his neck with and odd popping sound. Inazuma jumped at the unexpected movement.

"Whoa, man. Give us a little more warning next time, un. It's like seeing a corpse come to life out of nowhere."

Sasori ignored him, addressing Inazuma instead. "Do you have the scroll with you, brat?"

Deidara looked confused for a moment at the nickname, and opened his mouth to snap irritably at his partner, but before he could, Inazuma nodded and reached into her bulging jacket pocket. She pulled out the neatly wrapped scroll that she'd tied off with a piece of steel wire.

"Bring it over here and unroll it on the ground. I'm going to send you back."

"Reverse-summoning?" Deidara asked, wide-eyed, "Just how many jutsu do you know, un?"

"Enough for my trade, unlike you, the one-stupid-trick-wonder," (Deidara bristled very visibly, baring his teeth and groping for some clay. Sadly for him, he'd run out. Sasori pretended not to notice.) "Inazuma," he said, "Stand on your name."

She stepped onto the scroll, her left shoe completely obscuring her childish handwriting.

"That's fine," he said, "Thank you for your help."

Deidara's jaw went slack and nearly dropped to the cave floor at these words.

Sasori wove several seals in quick succession and smacked his palm against the scroll. The writing around Inazuma's foot began to glow blue, casting eerie shadows around her ankles.

The last words she heard were:

"And Deidara, since you've been a complete moron, I'm not going to waste my chakra healing your wound."

"YOU LITTLE…"

And Inazuma vanished in a puff of smoke.


	15. 15

Note: I pretty much just invented most of their names from the top of my head. If it means anything super-special, that's great, I guess, but they're mainly supporting characters. Rest assured, the story isn't about an army of OCs. Well, I do know that Taki means Waterfall, and Torikawa could be written as Bird-River, I suppose, and Yamamoto is Foothill/Mountainfeet, but that's a pretty generic Japanese surname anyway. Basically, there's no need to read into it too much.

* * *

><p>15<p>

_They say dragons roam_

_In breaks between thunderclouds_

_And sleep in sunshine_

* * *

><p>Kamomi had worked desperately over the years to keep up with her friend, and the two had taken the exit exam on the same day. They were assigned to the same genin team, and met their jonin guide and third group member in the spring. ("I <em>told<em> you we'd be on the same team," Kamomi couldn't help but rub it into her friend's face. Inazuma pretended to scoff, but secretly she was happy too.)

"Hello, I'm Goren Kajiya. I'll be your jonin teacher until the three of you graduate into chuunin. Go ahead and introduce yourselves, you little brats."

Inazuma twitched at the word "brat," as though flicking a fly off of her shoulder, but it was Shin who stepped up first.

"I'm Shin Yamamoto. I'm twelve years old, and slightly irritated that I have a pair of weak _little _girls__ on my team," he said blandly, glaring a little at Inazuma and Kamomi with his pale green eyes. He sat back down at a desk.

Inazuma's eyes flashed and she stepped up before their teacher could yell at Shin for being rude. "I'm Inazuma Hachi. Nine years old, and apparently talented enough to graduate, unlike some _late bloomers_here." She glared pointedly at Shin, who simply rolled his eyes.

"Now, Ina-"

"My name is Kamomi Torikawa," Kamomi interjected, her melodious voice cutting off their teacher yet again, "I'm also nine years old, and Ina-chan here is my best friend! The hawk's name is Taki, and don't forget it or he'll probably tear your hair out. Sorry if he does, but he can be a little temperamental," she apologized. Taki shrieked loudly at Shin from his position atop Kamomi's head, flapping his brownish-grey wings.

Shin and Inazuma glared at each other for a while, Kamomi sitting in between them and with an extremely fake smile fixed on her face in a desperate attempt to ease up the tension. Goren sighed, and wondered if he really should have volunteered as a jonin instructor.

* * *

><p>To celebrate their graduation, Kamomi invited Inazuma over for a slumber party. Shin was not invited.<p>

The two girls shared whispered secrets and hushed giggles as they bounced on Kamomi's generously fluffy, purple bedspread.

"So what do you think of Shin?" Kamomi asked, fingering an pale pink flower that was embroidered onto the sleeve of her pajamas. Taki shrieked and flapped his wings from his position on the windowsill.

"Oh hush, you stupid bird," Kamomi laughed. He cawed indignantly in response.

"Shin's a stuck-up brat that's sore about being the oldest. One of us should give him black eye to let him know what's what," Inazuma muttered.

"Her competitive streak shows! She must come out on top of everyone or the world will end!" cheered Kamomi. Inazuma threw a pillow at her. A knock came from Kamomi's door, and a soft parental voice reminded them that it was getting late. The night was already pitch-autumn black, after all.

Inazuma sighed and began undoing her braid. She tugged out the hair tie that kept it back from her face and combed her darkly tanned fingers through it.

"Let me help you with that," Kamomi said. Inazuma nodded, smiling.

"You know," Kamomi said, once the braid was completely undone, leaving Inazuma's hair slightly wavy, "you look nice with your hair down. You should wear it like that more often." She rearranged some strands of Inazuma's hair so that it fell softly around her ears and framed her dark face with flossy-white strands. Kamomi sat back and tilted her head to the side, admiring her handiwork.

"It's impractical. I can't have it flying all over the place in battle," Inazuma shrugged. Kamomi sighed.

"Sheesh, Ina, you're always worried about _battle_. We're genin! They aren't going to give us battle-likely missions. Once you're chuunin or jonin you can tie your hair into a grandmother-bun if you really want to. In the meantime, at least let some of it out of your braid. It makes you look real pretty."

Inazuma rolled her eyes, "Fine! Whatever gets you off my back."

Kamomi clapped her hands with glee.

The soon turned out the lights and continued their whispers in the darkness, where the style of Inazuma's hair didn't matter. It was too dark to see, after all.

* * *

><p><em>Note: And yes, as stupid as it seems, the hair is part of the story. I swear. Reviews are love. Especially critiques, because I have a feeling I need them. :P<em>


	16. 16

Note: I realized that I'm writing _entirely_ too much about this OC. Sorry. :( I promise to write more canon characters in following chapters. And yes, this is short, I know.

* * *

><p>16<p>

_Running in a race_

_Chill wind rushing in my face_

_I step up my pace_

* * *

><p>"Bird-Dragon-Boar-Snake-Rat," muttered Inazuma to herself as she wove the seals and gathered a semi-transparent ball of chakra between her palms. The ball glowed white-hot and crackled with static as she took aim at a nearby rock, but just as she was about to launch it, it fizzed out, giving Inazuma a nasty electric zap.<p>

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" she yelped, hopping up and down erratically and blowing on her tingling fingers.

Then, for the second time in as many months, she felt a strange tug behind her heart, and _poofed_ out of existence.


	17. 17

17

_Unexpected shock_

_When a child first sees a cat_

_Hiss and bare its claws_

* * *

><p>Inazuma face-planted onto a very familiar scroll. Disoriented, she tried to stand up, only to bump her head against the underside of a wooden table.<p>

"Oof!"

She heard a chair scuff against the floor and moments later, a pair of feet appeared in front of her face.

"Is that you, brat?"

She crawled out from under the table, rubbing the top of her head and dragging the scroll with her. She looked up.

There he was, hair practically dripping with blood as he towered over her, black cloak flowing endlessly from her nose to the sky.

"Hi!" she squeaked. He snorted.

"Come here, I need you to organize these poisons and their antidotes, based on their potency and composition. The vials have descriptions on them, you just have to match up the labels and put them in their proper places." He gestured to a pile of boxes overflowing with notes and various vials.

"Uh, okay…" she mumbled.

He nodded, and picked his way over to the other side of the room, where he sat down and positioned a lamp over his work. He picked up a thin, silvery scalpel and began carving. At first, Inazuma immediately assumed that whatever he was carving was some kind of wooden puppet, like the one she'd seen last time in the gorge.

But then Inazuma's eyes widened to the size of saucers when she realized that what he was carving was oozing blood. Dark, black blood that shined red where the light of a table lamp hit it, spreading thickly against the stained wood of the table.

She suddenly felt torn between nausea and tears, and turned quickly to the vials of poison that were waiting to be sorted.


	18. 18

18

_The twin of respect_

_The worm feels of the bird –_

_Is a crippling fear_

* * *

><p>Later, when she returned home that afternoon, her mother greeted her with a warm smile and a hug.<p>

"Welcome home, Ina-chan. How did your training go?"

If Inazuma's skin tone had allowed it, she would have appeared very pale.

"Fine, Mum," she muttered, trying not to sound too shaken. Her mother apparently took her quiet response as a sign of fatigue from the training, and offered her daughter some fresh-baked cookies.

"Maybe later."

Inazuma quickly made her way to her the bathroom. She pressed her palm against the surface of the mirror and stared blankly at her reflection.

The image of her shadowy face stared back at her, apparently unperturbed. She closed her eyes, her heart pounding as she remembered the glint of the blood and the smooth, hesitant feel of the kunai holster's buckle under her forefinger.


	19. 19

19

_Turning in its sleep_

_Bird awaits the winter's end_

_Longs to fly again_

* * *

><p>As she was sorting the vials of poison that day, Inazuma's heart pounded in her hears, and waves of heat seemed to shiver up her spine.<p>

She squinted at the label of a glass vial filled with bright green fluid, and read the numbers and letters that classified the toxin, before carefully nestling it in its proper place in a cardboard box. She then picked through a few more bottles until she found one, filled with black fluid, that had a matching label and the word "antidote" neatly written on the rubber cap.

She focused all of her willpower on not turning around and looking at what was going on behind her, but she could somehow hear (or imagined she could hear), the sickening sounds of scraping and sticky peeling. She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the antidote in the palm of one hand, and swallowed repeatedly before cracking her eyes back open into slits. Her eyelashes blurred her vision.

"Sasori…" she barely managed to squeak his name. It tasted like hot poison on her tongue.

"What is it, brat?"

She screwed her eyes shut again and swallowed, hard, to clear her voice, "What are you doing?"

She heard him set down the scalpel and pick up a heavier sounding metal tool that _clunked _against the wooden table. After a drawn out eternity of a quiet, slithering, sucking sound, which Inazuma imagined to be a bone of some sort being pried from its resting place with agonizing slowness, he spoke.

"The world of ninja is harsh and merciless, kid." She heard a _clunk_ as he set the tool down and a ringing _shling_ of metal against wood as he picked the scalpel back up.

"I'm forging tools of war."

* * *

><p>It was only later, as Inazuma lay shivering in her bed from something that wasn't the cold (there was a thick quilt pulled up over the top of her head), that she wondered if it had been the corpse he was talking about.<p>

Her warm breath filled up the air under the blankets until she felt as though she were suffocating.

She clutched a kunai to her chest, somehow reassured by the feel of its handle in her hands, and vowed that she would not be turned into a human puppet.


	20. 20

20

_A lone wolf is weak_

_Without the strength of its pack_

_Thus it stalks with care_

* * *

><p>The next morning, Inazuma found slight shadows under her eyes and a tremble to her fingers. Regardless, she showed up for the team training session.<p>

"Inazuma, are you alright?" Kamomi asked, worried, "You hardly say anything these days. What happened to the Ina that can't keep her mouth shut for more than five minutes at a time, huh?" Her bird, Taki, chirped softly from its perch on her shoulder.

"I say it's an improvement," Shin snorted, shoving his hands in his pockets as the team hiked up a mountain path to their usual training area. Kamomi glared at him angrily, but Inazuma simply walked on silently ahead of the team, her white hair bouncing and jerking with each step.

"I'm fine, honest. Just a little tired. I didn't sleep so well last night," she murmured.

Once they got to the training area, Inazuma seemed to recede into her own little world, and began practicing her jutsu with a feverish focus, drawing up ball after ball of crackling chakra, and ignoring the pain when they would explode in her hands.

Kamomi watched, worriedly.


	21. 21

Note: Pay very careful attention to this chapter. Also, sun is a source of light, and light illuminates the darkness; it lets you see. Derp.

* * *

><p>21<p>

_The fog-soaked valley_

_Is more difficult to see_

_When it glows with sun_

* * *

><p>A few days later, while Inazuma was in the middle of brushing out her long hair, she vanished from her room in a familiar smoke cloud, and found herself back in the presence of a certain puppet master. She listened to his instructions without shivering, not for even a moment.<p>

She summoned and re-sealed various puppets into their scrolls, checking to see that they were correctly labeled before placing them back onto their proper places on the rack. The rack was situated in a deep, unlit closet that frightened her more so than the newer human puppets that were still in construction in Sasori's workshop. The rows upon rows of scrolls seemed to stretch indefinitely into the closet. It was a place she knew she could never escape if she ever got turned around in.

"Sasori, can I ask you something?"

He didn't respond. She interpreted his silence as invitation to continue speaking.

"Why are you doing this?" Somewhere in her subconsciousness, she hoped that the vague question would allow him to explain away all the death and blood that permeated the very air of the room. She wanted to believe in the simple, child's laws of right and wrong, of hurt and understanding and love. She wanted to continue believing that evil couldn't touch her life.

He didn't ask her for clarification as he sat there, carving, blood dripping from his hair and his fingers. Sometimes she thought that it dripped from his eyes, too.

"Brat," he said quietly, "sometimes, puppets break, malfunction, or get destroyed in battle. Therefore, I need backups. You do understand that puppets are only useful because they do whatever you want them to do?"

She bobbed her head, certain that he would be able to tell that she had nodded, although his back was turned to her. As she unfurled yet another summoning scroll, Inazuma fought back the urge to shiver until her boots trembled against the floor. Was it really the dead, unfeeling puppets he was talking about? To him, was she already...

She barely heard his next words, which were carried on a whisper that could've been mistaken for a breeze in the leaves, had they not been in a room filled with stagnant air.

"Besides," Sasori held a spherical, bloodshot eyeball in his palm, examining its color carefully, "Why wouldn't I, when there's nothing for me to lose?"

She tied off the thick scroll in her miraculously steady hands.

"But is there anything for you to gain?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

She looked down at the scroll, clutched between her small hands, and thought of all the things they were capable of doing. She'd trained to her utmost for the past few years of her life, and could hit a moving target with a kunai from thirty paces away, could blind an opponent with a flash of lightning-powered light, could almost stun a squirrel with a flying, shaky ball of light. But the room where she stood was filled with blood. It was filled with poison and weapons made specifically to destroy powerful opponents in a short span of time. Her face burned.

Doubt fed on her thoughts.


	22. 22

Note: This might be my favorite chapter so far. It's _so intense_. And longer than usual. I'm so proud. Beware some gore. And remember to review!

* * *

><p>22<p>

_Unlike the fierce wasp_

_One sting is enough to end_

_The life of a bee_

* * *

><p>After that, Inazuma didn't see him for several more years. She and her team made chuunin, and she finally perfected her Shadow Strike. She even powered it up, packing more chakra into the lightning ball than her father (or anyone else, for that matter) would have deemed safe, and made the jutsu powerful enough to crumble stone. The boulder she practiced on eventually transformed into a pile of blackened gravel.<p>

The first time she blew an oponent into charred chunks with a stab of crackling lightning, she hardly batted an eyelash, though she broke down in graceless tears once the the battle had ended, barely before it'd begun. It was on a B-rank mission, and her teammates were less congratulatory and more horrified when they witnessed her jutsu in battle for the first time.

That very same day Shin finally shut his trap about her gender.

Even their jonin instructor (who'd continued to lead their group even after they all made chuunin - Cloud believed in tightly-knitted teamwork) was more than a little disturbed. She had been in the right, and would possibly have suffered severe injury or death if she hadn't torched the enemy ninja that had been been holding her hostage; she was the smallest, weakest-looking of their team, after all. But the sight of a thirteen-year-old girl blasting another human being into pieces was plenty enough to send shivers down his spine.

But because Inazuma cried, her teammates internally forgave her.

She wasn't sure what emotion had triggered her tears.

She wasn't sure if she enjoyed being a tool of war.

_The world of ninja is harsh and merciless._

There is no room for hesitancy.

And certainly not purity.

There is blood.

Blood.

Blood...

Inazuma stood in front of the slightly spotted, cracked mirror of the hotel, with the door locked to prevent her teammates from coming in and comforting her. She gripped the sink in her hands and stared glassy-eyed at the mirror, her lower lip twitching with unspent hysteria.

The memories of the fight flooded her mind's eye...

* * *

><p>She twisted her hands painfully and locked her fingers together:<p>

Bird-

"Come on, just drop your weapons and this little girl will be fine, don't you worry." The ninja's hand was large enough to grip Inazuma's two smaller ones behind her back with ease, twisting them painfully until she gasped out loud.

"Ina!"

-Dragon-

"Don't move!" shouted Goren, "We'll help you. Shin, Kamomi, get cover in the trees." Her team darted out of sight.

The enemy ninjas' cackle sent a freezing shiver up her spine, and suddenly she was falling to her knees, falling facefirst to the dirt where the pebbles and twigs dug painfully into her cheekbone. She felt the cold point of a kunai kiss the base of her skull and trail slowly back and forth along her spine.

Suddenly, she felt the knife slash across her nape, where her shoulders and back merged with her neck. The cut wasn't deep enough to cause permanent damage, but instantly unleashed a wave of fresh pain and blood. Inazuma screamed loudly, before a boot smashed her face into the earth, cutting her off.

She heard Kamomi's hawk, Taki, shriek with anger from where he was circling above, but the bird didn't swoop down on the ninja.

-Boar-

"Come on out, you dirty Cloud-nin," called the shinobi that had pinned her down and cut her, "or I'll do much worse than this, I can assure you."

"Kill her already, she's just going to get in the way," his teammate snapped impatiently.

-Snake-

Inazuma heard a grunt of assent and felt the the man raise the knife into the air. The ninja leaned over her, chuckling, his grip on her hands loosening. She twisted them into the final hand sign.

-RAT

She poured an enormous rush of chakra into her cupped hands - more than she'd dared to use ever before - focusing it into a searing point, and just as the knife swooped down towards her neck, she jerked her palms wide open.

BOOOOOOOM.

The man's weight was suddenly gone, replaced by a flash of heat and light and Inazuma rolled away from and got to her knees, the smell of burning flesh and smoke in her nostrils, dust coating her face and tongue. She coughed, she raised her freed hands, and she focused her chakra once more.

Her hands flashed through the signs: Bird-Dragon-Boar-Snake-Rat.

She built up two separate Strikes, one in each palm, as the remaining two ninja leaped toward her of of the clearing smoke, their weapons drawn and poised and their faces contorted with fury. She put her cupped hands up in front of her, staring into their eyes as their shadows fell onto her face and they came flying down from the sky, kunai and katana raised, blood on one man's jacket, a dirt-smudged snarl on the other's face... Her curled fingers snapped open, splayed wide, launching her jutsu at the ninja.

BA-BOOOOOM.

Her crackling chakra flew from her palms and speared directly into their chests. She saw their eyes go wide, saw them bulge, just before a jagged hole tore through their bodies and sprayed little droplets of blood into the sunny, blue sky.

The two ninja thudded to the ground, dead.

Inazuma stood up. She brushed off her knees. She watched them lie there and seep blood into the dust. She stared for a whole minute to make sure that they were really dead.

Were they really dead?

No way. No way. No way. (No way.)

She looked up, and saw the body parts of man that had had pinned her down, strewn across the clearing in bloody chunks. His head laid several meters away from his arm, his eyes blank and blind and his jaw slack and twisted with an expression of surprise.

Her teammates jumped out of the trees. Kamomi's eyes were wide with fright and shock; she held her trembling hands up to her mouth. Shin just stared at her, his green eyes boring into her soul.

* * *

><p>...Inazuma's clutched the sink so hard that her knuckles showed through her dark skin. She swore to herself that she couldn't have killed them (there was just <em>no way<em>), but the always-truthful voice at the back of her mind whispered that she had.

She stared into the mirror, eyes wide.

Her hair had come out of its braid, falling all around her shoulders and drenched reddish-brown from the cut at the nape of her neck. Her enemy's blood was drying on her shirt, and mingling with her own in the masses of her once cloud-white strands of hair.

The blood must've been dried and brown, but in her reflection, in this light, in her eyes, all she could see was a thick, dripping, blood-red color that started by her ears and soaked all the way down to the tips that rested against her chest. A fresh droplet, kept in liquid form inside a thick clump of hair, dripped into the white sink.

_That was the color red his hair was. Like blood on kitchen tiles._

Within seconds, every strand of her blood-soaked hair was slashed cleanly away with a kunai.

Kamomi hammered at the door of the bathroom. "Ina!"

"Inazuma! Are you alright?" It was Shin's voice, tinged with a concern that he never used to show her.

Inazuma turned on the bathtub tap to drown out the sound of their worry. She soon slid under the water, listening to the roar of the tap like thunder in her ears, and ignoring the slight pink tinge the bathwater took on.


	23. 23

Note: This story has finally cleared 1,000 hits. I'm so joyful. :D I struggled a lot with this chapter, but the next few should come pretty quickly, and I'll finish it soon. Much thanks to the mighty _Chocolate Pencil_ for going through this and helping me out. There's only two more chapters to go!

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><p>23<p>

_The war is truly lost_

_When the blood of enemies_

_Sinks into one's heart_

* * *

><p>When she was finally summoned again another several months after that B-rank mission, Inazuma watched as Sasori climb into a war puppet of his that he called Hiruko, which she recognized from the first time that he'd summoned her. That mission had made her realize how far she'd come, but it also made her realize how easy it was to kill. Killing wasn't the hard part; it was dealing with the aftershocks. Humans are extremely fragile. She stared at his back as he crouched down and fiddled with a piece of the puppet, and wondered vaguely if it really was made of wood as she'd first thought. She swallowed, and knew that this was her chance; she'd stop Sasori from creating any more human puppets. She'd spare them from her fate.<p>

But... She hesitated.

She couldn't help but ask questions. They distracted her from her thoughts.

"What were your reasons for making me a summon of yours?" Her tone was flat, oddly even, and she stared calmly at him as he dipped some senbon into a vial of purple liquid. He crouched by his puppet, and after he carefully set the last of the needles in their proper places, he looked up.

He stared at her, about to latch Hiruko closed. His eyes glinted like glass in the light of the bulb overhead as they bored into her own.

"Well?" she asked.

"You've lost it, haven't you?" he asked, finally.

"What?" she thought she knew what he meant, but wasn't sure. She wasn't sure about a lot of things, these days.

"You've killed," he said simply.

She nodded.

"The purity of childhood is beautiful, but alas, short lived," he muttered, mostly to himself, "I fear that I may have poisoned you, after all."

"Is that your answer? Was that why you made me a summon of yours?"

He cracked a smile that lacked utterly in joy.

"I suppose it was."

"Then I suppose you don't have any more use for me, do you?"

He stared at her for a while. His eyes took in her silent mouth, her bright eyes (that weren't quite so bright as they used to be), her sleek, snow-white hair (it was shorter than when he saw her last) and dark skin.

He'd always wondered how the land of Lightning could produce people with such dark skin and pale hair. It made no sense, from a scientific standpoint. Then again, it was another anomaly in itself that most desert-dwellers, like himself, had such a pale complexion.

To Sasori, the changes that people went over time were at once fascinating and depressing. These must be the changes, the destruction, that his fool of a partner always prattled on about. The naïve and unconditional faith of her childhood had been mesmerizing and impossibly addictive to watch. The fact that something so pure could exist in this corrupt world had seemed so improbable (truly, this _brightness_must be art, and as art, it had seemed impossible that it would eventually be corrupted and broken in time). He wondered if he should have made her a puppet at the very beginning, before the child in her had a chance to die. But no…

He shook his head wearily. "No. I suppose not."

"So are you going to send me away?" She wasn't bitter, or sad, or anything. The bright, talkative toddler was practically wiped away.

"I've got nothing to gain from you," he said mechanically. She nodded, and stepped back onto the scroll, just as mechanically.

How strange, he thought. How strange that humans could be dehumanized so quickly. Then, his heart thudded dully in his chest, and he reconsidered. Just look at him, the farthest thing from human that he'd ever met, and he still had a heart. But then again, it was too late for him. He'd progressed to the point where he could carve any other human into any form he desired (without any hesitation), and make it a part of his arsenal, make it a part of _him_. He was a menagerie of interchangeable parts. However, her eyes were dull, but he suspected she still felt pain. Her heart had a expiration date on it, but it was still fully connected to her body and her emotions. She was alive in a way he never would be again. Because she was alive, she could not quite become one of his parts.

Deidara said that perfection expires immediately. Sasori said that it lasts forever. But perhaps it was neither. There never was such a thing as perfection, and there never would be. What glowed beautifully decayed with each strike it recieved, but glowed all the brighter when alongside its ruin. His heart thudded again, and he tried imagining an eternity. It was far more difficult than it used to be, and he realized that his own naïve, unconditional faith wasn't the same as it used to be.

It really was too late for him.

"But, Inazuma," (she glanced up at him), "there is still hope for you."

He smiled faintly, now, eyes wide like madness. She felt a twinge of fear, but didn't show it.

"Though there are things that can no longer change, and I am one of them, you're still alive and malleable. Don't let the wrong hands forge your path any longer."

In the moment it took for the words to sink in, in the moment just before she disappeared in a cloud of smoke, she hesitated.

She failed to strike him with the intense, deadly chakra that she'd built up in her fingertips.


	24. 24

Note: Believe it or not, this was originally going to be much shorter. Countdown: ONE more to go!

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><p>24<p>

_Floating in the sky_

_Watching as the land goes by_

_She hears the raven's cry_

* * *

><p>Mere weeks later, news of the Kazekage's capture by the Akatsuki began circulating around the five great nations. The names Deidara of Iwa and Sasori of the Red Sand became infamous.<p>

Details surrounding the incident were utterly foggy, for there hadn't been direct diplomatic contact between the Sand and the Clouds for decades.

Kamomi had just been fretting over Inazuma's increasingly remote nature (yet again) when Shin sprinted up to them, short of breath and eyes glinting with excitement. The two girls stared at him, eyebrows raised at his energy.

"I just heard..." _pant_ "...the Kazekage..."_ wheeze_ "...got kidnapped..." _cough_ "...by the Akatsuki..." And he recounted the much retold and jumbled up tale between huffing breaths. But the main story was true, and they all knew it was true. Something this big couldn't roll all the way across the continent by the sheer force of gossip, could it?

Even as Inazuma heard the news, she simply snorted along with everyone about how stupid the Village Hidden in the Sand must have been to get its leader kidnapped. (For goodness' sakes, honestly!)


	25. 25

Note: And this is the end! Thanks to everyone for reading, reviewing, and all that jazz. If you've read my poetry collection _Reflections_, you might recognize the lines from the non-haiku at the beginning. :P I hope this final chapter does not disappoint, despite it's semi-shortness.

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><p>25<p>

_To wait ceaselessly for sunrise_

_As the residue of your waiting_

_Keeps you forever_

_Mesmerized._

* * *

><p>Kankuro swept his hand through the air, twisting his fingers into complicated patterns and sending Sasori's body flying toward the Hidden Cloud girl.<p>

Inazuma dodged Sasori's blades and shot a strike of lightning chakra at her opponent, missing her target because she was trying to avoid damaging the puppet (why she didn't just blast it to pieces, she didn't know).

_Why wouldn't I, when there's nothing for me to lose?_

Bringing sparking chakra to her fingertips, she managed to dart in and strike her opponent's shoulder, numbing his entire left arm and earning her a murderous glare. He swung his right hand and brought Sasori's body around, purple dripping from every protruding blade.

_It's poison. If you tell anyone I'm here, you'll die._

Her mission was to steal an important artifact from a daimyo's castle. And just because someone else had hired this boy to do the same as her, they were pitted against each other in a deadly battle.

_"But is there anything for you to gain?"_

She struck him in the other arm, and his strings broke, letting Sasori crash to the floor. Her opponent snarled at her, purple face paint giving him the appearance of a demon from hell. He wasn't even much older than she was, and for all his terrifying looks, for all his evil actions, and for all his battle spite…

_There is still hope for you._

She punched him in the face, zapping him one last time.

He fell to the floor, unconscious. She stepped over his body with hardly a glance and kneeled over the other one. The wooden one with the hair like blood. Inazuma turned it over, and it made an echoing _clunk _sound as its shoulder hit the stone of the floor. She swallowed, her throat tight with some kind of emotion she didn't care to name.

"All this time," she whispered, "And you were just a puppet, yourself."

Inazuma took a deep breath and set down his body (it echoed against the stone floor), for some reason sorry that he had no eyelids that she could close over those glassy, unseeing, decorative eyes of his. She clenched her small hands into tight fists, and got to her feet, feeling as though the floor beneath her was swaying - just slightly, like a canoe on breezy waters - but also feeling as though she was the most powerful being in the world, standing erect in the shadows in middle of this enormous, empty castle.

"Why would you let yourself die?" she wanted to ask, "Why would you let yourself become the puppet of another?" But she knew that he could no longer answer, (he _wouldn't_ answer even if he were still there) and that the only answer she _would_ get would be from herself.

_Don't let the wrong hands forge your path any longer._

"I won't," she whispered to herself, timidly. Then she cleared her throat forcefully and spoke loudly enough for her voice to carry through the dim-lit hallways, loudly enough for any lurking enemy to hear her words.

"This is _my __path _to change," she called, with the confident voice she thought she'd lost so long ago.

And she turned and brought her hands together, creating a flickering point of light between them, which grew brighter and brighter in intensity before exploding out of her hands and blowing a hole in the granite wall with a blinding, ground-shaking _roar_.

The snow floated gently down from the sky, lit up with the cold, white light of the sun veiled in the clouds.

She leaped out of the shadowy halls and into the sky without a backwards glance.


End file.
